Nursing home deficiency citations for safety

Deficiency citations for safety violations in U.S. nursing homes from 2000 to 2007 are examined (representing a panel of 119,472 observations). Internal (i.e., operating characteristics of the facility), organizational factors (i.e., characteristics of the facility itself), and external factors (i.e., characteristics outside of the influence of the organization) associated with these deficiency citations are examined. The findings show that nursing homes increasingly receive deficiency citations for resident safety issues. Low staffing levels, poor quality of care, and an unfavorable Medicaid mix (occupancy and reimbursement) are associated with the likelihood of receiving deficiency citations for safety violations. In many cases, this likely influences the quality of life and quality of care of residents.     

Protecting children in new times: child protection and the risk society

This paper examines the nature of late-modern child protection by placing it in the context of the paradigm of `risk society'. It traces out a structural transformation in the relationship between expertise and lay people that has occurred since the 1970s which resulted in the emergence of child abuse inquiries and new public disclosures of professional 'failures'. The dynamic and empowering features of social developments are identified in how institutions, professionals and lay people re-appropriate power, knowledge and reskill themselves. Traditionally repressed problems like child sexual abuse have gained recognition in a context where abused women and children – like all late-modern citizens – are reflexively engaged in constructing their own biographies and using expertise in the planning of their life projects. A radically new professional risk consciousness in child protection is traced to late-modern existential crises associated with death and sexuality and the emergence of manufactured risk, which is known and experienced by social workers as risk in the context of radically uncertain futures for children. Drawing on the work of sociologists of 'reflexive modernity', the paper aims to advance our understandings of social work and child protection beyond the one-dimensional focus of post-modernist critics on power, control and bureaucracy to recognize the new opportunities, as well as the dangers, involved in child protection in risk society.     

The protection of children in time: child protection and the lives and deaths of children in child abuse cases in socio-historical perspective

For some 20 years now in the UK, assessments of the effectiveness of child protection have been carried out under the shadow of child abuse inquiries. Yet, relatively little is known about social work and matters of child life and death that preceded the first major inquiry into the death of Maria Colwell in 1973. This paper offers a socio-historical perspective on child protection and the lives and deaths of children in child abuse cases, and excavates the foundations upon which the major developments of the past two decades have proceeded. The emergence and development of a'modern' ideology of child protection, which held that it is possible and desirable for social intervention to work to protect children in time, is traced to processes that unfolded from the late nineteenth century. Statistical evidence on the numbers of children who have died in cases across the twentieth century is examined and analysed in the context of social theories of modernity and perspectives on the changing ways in which child death has (literally) been handled by professionals and knowlege about the problem managed over time.     

Social capital as social relations: the contribution of normative structures

This paper presents a framework for social capital that highlights the normative structures through which it is manifested. The primary focus is on the ways that norms structure the relationships in which social capital is embedded. To this end, we introduce four types of normative structures which condition social capital: market, bureaucratic, associative, and communal. A field site in Japan is used to illustrate how different aspects of social capital interact. This case analysis also serves to make an important distinction between the availability and use of social capital. The central arguments are that 1) social capital is organized in different ways by the normative structures in which it is embedded; 2) there are important interactions between these different aspects of social capital that are often overlooked by simpler frameworks; 3) a useful distinction can be made between available social capital and used social capital; 4) access to social capital can be used to analyze power relations; and 5) distinguishing different aspects of social capital makes areas visible that are overlooked by other understandings of social capital. We conclude by identifying the utility of our perspective for informing public policy and guiding future research.     

Grapes of Wrath: Discrimination in the Produce Aisle

Discrimination against minorities and people of lower social economic status is often hard to prove quantitatively. One way to measure discrimination concretely is to examine the quality of goods available to people of different races and socioeconomic status (SES). We investigated the quality of supermarket produce in neighborhoods of varying socioeconomic status (high, medium, and low SES). Fresh fruit was purchased from 3 different locations of 2 separate supermarket chains in a mid-sized southern city, for a total of 6 stores for comparison. Participants used 2 methods to record their perceptions of fruit quality in terms of both appearance and taste: a relative ranking of each fruit and a 9-point Likert scale. Results indicate that supermarkets in the lowest socioeconomic area had the poorest quality fruit and the markets in the highest SES had the best fruit. The results are discussed in terms of their potential implication on health and lifestyle factors for lower SES individuals.     

Context-Sensitive Linking: It's a Small World After All

Linking services that provide seamless access to a library's e-journal collections are becoming increasingly prominent. This article outlines some of the hurdles to seamless linking and discusses the technologies that make linking services possible. These include the Digital Object Identifier, the CrossRef initiative, the development of emerging standards like the OpenURL, resolution servers, and an examination of how these are incorporated into a linking service. The authors interviewed representatives from four companies providing linking services—Ex Libris, Sirsi, Endeavor, and Openly Informatics—and describes features of their systems. Serials Review 2002; 28:267–282.     

Validation of Multimedia Models Assessing Exposure to PAHs—The SOLEX Study

Polluted soils have become a public health problem. While population exposure to soil pollutants is generally quantified using multimedia models, their estimations have not been validated, and studies that attempted to do so are scarce. The objective of the SOLEX study was to compare the predictions of pyrene exposure levels (converted into 1 hydroxypyrene) computed by several models with the results of urinary 1-hydropyrene (1-HOP) assays among 110 employees working at three sites polluted during their past use as manufactured gas plants. Four models were used: AERIS (Canada), CalTOX (California, USA), CLEA (UK), and HESP (The Netherlands). Three occupational exposure scenarios--with office, mixed, and outdoor workers--were constructed, based upon job activities during two measurement campaigns, one in winter and one in summer. The exposure levels estimated by the four models could differ markedly (from 7 up to 80 times) according to the exposure scenario. Also, the predominant exposure routes differed according to the model (direct soil ingestion for HESP and CalTOX, inhalation for AERIS, and dermal absorption for CLEA). The predictions of CalTOX are consistent with the 1-HOP measurements for all the scenarios. For HESP, the consistency is observed for the scenarios, office and mixed, for which the pyrene level in the soil is low. AERIS and CLEA yield results that are systematically above the 1-HOP measurements. This study confirms that validation of the models is crucial and points out to the need to proceed to assess components of the models that are the most influential using appropriate statistical analysis in combination with true field data.     

HIV/AIDS knowledge and HIV/AIDS risk perception: An indirect relationship

It is often assumed that a relationship exists between knowledge about Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and AIDS, and perceptions of risk concerning HIV infection. However, this assumption has not stood up to empirical scrutiny. Researchers have, therefore, started to search for factors that might indirectly link these constructs. This paper reports findings demonstrating that the relationship between levels of perceived HIV risk and levels of HIV/AIDS knowledge are indirectly linked by the extent to which others are perceived to be a risk. A total of 152 prison staff participated and were assessed with regard to their levels of HIV/AIDS knowledge, perceived personal risk of occupational HIV infection and the extent to which they perceived other occupational groups to be at risk of occupational HIV infection. It is argued that this indirect linkage represents a form of reappraisal coping. The ideas of optimistic bias are also extended to the occupational setting in terms of relative risk judgements. Results indicated that prison staff made realistic relative risk judgements. However, such judgements were unrelated to levels of knowledge. Implications for eduational and training interventions are suggested.     

Restudying Cañamelar of The People of Puerto Rico

This article discusses an unknown restudy of one locale of the People of Puerto Rico Project–my own. From 1980 to 1982 the author did ethnographic fieldwork in Bo. Jauca, Santa Isabel, the research site of Sidney Mintz. Building on Mintz's work, my goal was to take our shared historical materialism further, into a broader analysis of capitalism, colonialism, class, politics, and power. Where Mintz framed his study within production units, such as Colonia Destino and Central Aguirre, my study began with analysis of the oligarchic structure of the United States sugar industry as a whole, and how it shaped colonial policy. Where the People of Puerto Rico Project reconstructed insular class and political patterns as context for local studies, the restudy took islandwide class structure and political positions as a focus of analysis in itself. Where the earlier work chronicled the rise of a plantation system and rural proletariat, the later study explored their decline—why did the Puerto Rican sugar industry collapse, and how did seemingly homogenous Jauquenos differentiate into a graded system of stratification? The years from 1948 to 1982 saw other class transformations, as the rural proletariat was recast into the larger, more diffuse, and less politically potent category of “the poor” and life circumstances of all Jauqenos became more individuated and dependent on state power centers in San Juan and Washington.     

Psychosocial Correlates of Methamphetamine Use

Methamphetamine (MA) abuse is a devastating problem that has been sweeping the United States from west to east and has reached epidemic proportion in many areas. Literature on the drug itself, its history, and its effects are reviewed. The current project aimed to examine the psychosocial correlates of MA use using Hudson's Multi-Problem Screening Inventory (MPSI). The MPSI was given to a control group consisting of undergraduate social work students (n = 17) and a group of past-year MA users (n = 15). Differences between users and non-users were examined across the 27 domains of the MPSI, and subscales for which MA users exceeded the clinical cutting score were noted. In addition, the correlation between severity of craving for MA and MPSI scores was examined. MA users differed significantly from non-users on the depression, partner, child and neighbor problems, aggression, fearfulness, ideas of reference, phobias, guilt, disturbed thinking, memory loss, and drug abuse subscales. MA users exceeded clinical cutting scores on all of these scales except child problems; fearfulness; ideas of reference; self-esteem; sexual discord; personal stress; friend, school and coworker problems; and confused thinking. Severity of craving was correlated with MPSI score on all MPSI scales except self-esteem; sexual discord; mother, father, friend, coworker, school and family problems; suicide; non-physical abuse; and alcohol abuse. Interesting findings regarding the control group are also discussed.